Early spring in Paris is not the worst one can experience – as always it was an enjoyment to visit this beautiful city. Also it was a pleasure meeting so many great children’s books publishers and service providers at the Paris book fair. It is obvious that a lot is happening in the digital space for children’s books, and we are pleased to be part of that. TapBookAuthor was present at the Paris book fair to showcase our solution and to connect with the key players in the French market. We met some very interesting people and businesses, and we are excited moving forward establishing a presence in France.

In our series of how-to videos, we will today show a really useful feature that does not apply to the end user, but is very helpful in the authoring tool. Zoom. Have a look below!

This feature is often used for zooming in and making sure the details are pixel perfect, for instance when working with a dynamic overlay. The feature should not be confused with the ZoomTo interaction types we also offer (these are shown the end user) that can be used for creating exciting effects – let us get back to that in a later video.

If you have questions above the feature above or suggestions about new videos topics we should cover, be sure to let us know.

To continue our little series with info on our team, we today let our CEO and Founder sneak in a word or two (to be honest that happens more often than not anyway!).

If it is at all possible to be risk-adverse as a Founder of a startup, Sondre says claims he is – and has been able to steer the company to a profit every year since its founding.

Title: CEO and Founder

Specialities: As a founder of a startup you cannot really afford to have specialities, so I guess mine is that I never feel I am too good for any type of work that needs to be done. I do my share of technical architecture, bookkeeping & invoicing, server maintenance, sales, programming, customer support and product management and enjoy it a lot.

Background: MSc in computer science (NTNU) and MBA in technology management (NTNU, MIT Sloan). Back in the days I also earned a 2nd Lt’s star on the shoulder in the Royal Norwegian Air Force.

Fun fact: I once travelled with train from Moscow to Beijing via Siberia and Mongolia and swam in the manhood-shrinking lake Baikal (13 degrees Celsius!) enroute…

Luci Corduneanu has been with TapBookAuthor as a developer for three years

We are going to do a little series of info on our team. We start off with the developer (not counting our CEO) that has been with us the longest, Luci.

Name: Lucian Corduneanu

Title: Software Developer

Specialties: Proud to be first developer hired. I had the pleasure to work with Sondre, who is a great mentor and teacher. Now we have a bigger team and I’m doing the local coordination and support as needed. I have experience building frontend systems with java, GWT, smartGWT, HTML, CSS, JS as well as backend systems with java, jsp, hibernate, mySQL

Fun fact: I was riding my bike, through a nearby park, which is typically full of children playing, thus, with moderate speed. I had my phone in the right hand talking, when a cute little girl cut my way. I had to use my left hand for a quick break, but the speed was optimal for a perfect flip over the front wheel type of fall. Nobody, except me was hurt, so use the left hand to talk while riding the bike.

On May 16th, we held our very first user-forum in Oslo. Almost all our customers were attending for an crammed two hour session in the lovely library at Aschehoug in Oslo.

Thank you, Aschehoug for hosting the event! Sondre, our CEO, went through the new features of the next release of TapBookAuthor.com. Thanks to our simple subscription model, all these awesome features will be available to all subscribers as the new version is deployed.

After the presentation of new features, a round-table discussion was held to shed light on how our customers use TapBookAuthor; what works and what can be improved. Many good ideas were discussed and the TapBookAuthor crew got loads of new inspiration for the near, and long-term roadmap.

Leseland, an app from Samlaget helps children learn reading

One of the demos held was for Samlaget’s Leseland app that was about to be released for both Windows, Android and of course all the iPads out there. This app used both the in-app-purchasing that was added to the tool this winter, the read-along (aka “karaoke mode”) function as well of activation of different sets (“layers”) of sounds and effects according to user selections. You can see a screenshot from the app (yep, the roof is indeed leaking – using the animation feature!) attached to this post. Click the image to see it full size.

Thanks to our users who attended the user forum meeting – and we hope it will be even more next time around!

As we are growing, and more and more customers and users discover TapBookAuthor.com, we want to create a place where we can meet and connect with our customers and they with each other.

Enter the “TapBookAuthor user forum” – an event that will likely take place two times a year in Oslo. The first one will be held May 16th, more on that in another blog-post after the event. We will use the user-forum as a place to exchange experiences, discuss usage scenarios, present new features and upcoming plans for TapBookAuthor.com.

If you would like to get an invite, even if you have not yet started using the tool, let us know and we will see what we can do.

TapBookAuthor is present at the huge Frankfurt Book Fair. This is the place to be if what you are doing is even remotely related to books.

I’ve been roaming around the vast premises, meeting and getting to know a lot of interesting people. From small one-person shops, to big publishing groups. I’m impressed with the depth and beauty of the children’s books I’ve seen, many of which are small outright pieces of art!

The feedback I get on the TapBookAuthor.com tool is very positive, so I’m sure we will be working on digitizing and enriching some of these beautiful books very soon. We’re looking forward to establishing and building strong relationships with the very interesting people I’ve met during these days.

There are still a couple of days left of the Fair, so let me know if you are interested in a quick chat.